Scientists have developed a method to determine whether an egg comes from organic or conventional farming by scanning it.
A new type of test procedure can prove with a high accuracy rate whether an egg sold as organic actually comes from an organic farm. The procedure, which uses nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR spectroscopy), has an accuracy of 99.9 percent, said Andreas Juadjur, head of chemical analysis at the German Institute of Food Technology (DIL) in Quakenbrück (Osnabrück district). The research project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture as part of a program to promote organic farming.
The method allows conclusions to be drawn about the profile of the individual ingredients of an egg in a short time, explained Juadjur: “We basically take a fingerprint of the egg and compare this fingerprint in the form of the ingredient profile with our database.” Previously, the Quakenbrück scientists had examined 4,500 eggs over a period of two and a half years and created a database from them.
Process uses artificial intelligence
The aim was to develop a model that would allow conclusions to be drawn about the origin of eggs whose origin is unknown. The accuracy of the method depends on the validity of the samples provided, said Juadjur. The difficulty was that in conventional hen farming there are usually only three different breeds of chicken. In organic farming there are many more breeds. The breed of chicken also influences the ingredient profile of the egg.
The project has shown that it is possible to establish such models with the help of artificial intelligence with a sufficiently large data set in order to create analyses of the origin of animal foods in the future. “The scientific part has been done. If you want to use this as a verification tool, you would have to check and expand the data every year,” said Juadjur.
Can also be used for other foods
According to Juadjur, the DIL scientists have also shown that NMR spectroscopy can be used to detect the difference between dry-aged and wet-aged meat in beef. The method could potentially be used for any food of animal origin.
The aim of the project was to find a method that could prove that the animals were kept organically. This would give farmers the opportunity to confirm the accuracy of the labelling so that consumers can have confidence in the products, said Juadjur: “There are cases where cheating occurs and it is important that this can be checked again on an analytical side.”
Quickly uncover food scandals
The process also makes it possible to uncover food scandals more quickly. Juadjur recalled the melamine scandal in China, in which the basic plastic product melamine was mixed into milk powder to give the impression of a higher protein content. 300,000 small children became ill and six died.
In this case, the NMR-based method would not have detected the melamine, but it would have noticed that something was wrong. “With one measurement, we can see in 20 minutes whether there are any abnormalities in the spectrum of the ingredients,” he said.
Options for controlling hemp cultivation
Juadjur’s team already has another idea of how the process based on NMR spectroscopy could be used: it could also be used to analyze the ingredients of hemp. After cannabis is legalized, this could be a way to keep statistics on the hemp varieties grown, for example on the proportion of the intoxicating component THC. “This could be fed back to politicians so that they can use this data to evaluate the impact of the legislation,” said Juadjur.
Source: Stern
